an interesting approach to immigration reform

Sell it.

This actually makes some sense. Perhaps it's not ideal, but it makes a lot more sense than having the government determine how many of Microsoft's workers and Harvard's graduate students can be from some other country. Under the present scenario, the government presumes to determine the quality or status of prospective legal "front door" immigrants. Realistically the only useful participation for government is to screen people for confirmed terrorist or criminal associations. Otherwise, I don't see a role for governments on immigration. So instead of having government determine the quality of workers who get into the country, let the market. Set this up like a cap and trade system. Cap the limit at something much higher than at present (say one million, scaling upward when the price of visas inflates too fast) and then auction off the visas (and allow them to be traded privately once sold).

The idea would be that not as many people would buy visas for people to pick strawberries or roof houses, but an engineering firm or school would almost certainly grab as many of these as they could. We know this because they're already trying to do so every year and the visa applications run out obscenely fast. Immigration in principle has excellent economic and social benefits. But importing hundreds of thousands of low wage, unskilled labourers, and according them with few if any legal rights is probably not the best way to do this. Importing hundreds of thousands of high skilled workers makes a bit more sense. I'm not so sure I care one way or the other. I'd have a very high cap on the number of visas per year in other words.

But this at least sounds like a sensible "conservative" approach because it resembles more of a market response than the usual trope of fortifications at the borders and police state inequalities once one passes those barriers (and risks economic slavery from coyotes or possible employers). It also means that immigration enforcement agents are tasked with a much simpler task: screening people for potentially hazardous associations or habits rather than chasing down lots of illegal immigrants or their employers (you could send the IRS after employers who violate the agreements or don't get the visas), and rather than messing with a bunch of useless forms that boil down to something like "why do you need a foreigner to do this or that job instead of an American?" Why is that properly considered any of the government's business who we might want to hire?

Update: in a more plausible look at the futility of normal conservative approaches, see the rise of Sheriff Joe.

Kind of funny how a policy and new law which is in part directed from a public outrage at an increase in crime (which actually didn't exist in the first place), is likely to result in...an increase of crime.